I have had a variety of ideas surrounding feelings of intent and “allowing things to happen.” I believe that I’m someone who has a strong grip on the former, and instead of switching to the other side, I believe there to be a balance between these two in order to be in a state of contentment of whatever is happening. We can use intent in order to get closer to our goals, while we can let things be and be okay with whatever comes as a result of our equanimity. In order to achieve something, you need to assign a goal to achieve, and you need to believe that you are required to reach that goal post, for whatever reason you create. In the acknowledgement that you are the one creating the rules and systems to follow, you can then realize that these are manipulatable. We can assign whatever label to anything of our choosing, and with these labels, we can create hierarchies of things to be done, and so what needs to be done is also chosen by us. By believing we have this ability to choose, we can then choose, with reasonable limits, and with that, we can choose to do things with or without intent.
What we might describe as, “allowing things to happen” could also be noted as going with the grain, instead of against it, or really any saying that follows the idea that one should follow the path with the least amount of resistance. This form of idea, theoretically anyway, allows for one to minimize the amount of pain they experience. They feel equanimity with all experiences, and because there is no hierarchy created by them, but instead, only the one from the world, they feel both good and bad, but it is just simply that, good and bad, nothing more. We have a tendency to continually dig deeper and find out why things are, and especially in the case of wanting to do particular things, when we are not able, we want to find out why that is. Is this a problem? What is considered a problem, is once again, self-assigned. It may or may not be a problem. If you consider a force that impairs you from doing something to be a problem, then yes, if not, then no, and then all the little possibilities in-between those particular two options.
If we had instead allowed things to happen, we wouldn’t have been able to assign anything more or less as a problem. It just is, and it was meant to be, whatever it is. If it were not meant to be, how could it be? It couldn’t be, because it is, not is not. This type of thinking can be beneficial in the case that you find yourself frequently in a state of pain or anguish, and you reach those states by your own means, and you are blissfully unaware that it is by your own hands that you experience those feelings. For the ease of simplification, this could be broken down into two parts again, one side is causing the pain or anguish as a result of external actions, while the other side is causing the negative feelings as a result of internal thinking. Obviously, there are many more sides than these two, like the person who does both these things, but with anything, there are an indefinite number of explanations and conclusions, and this mere fact can be impairing.
Despite the suffering we might cause ourselves as a result of our actions or thoughts, we might believe that such feelings are justified and reasonable. In response to the stress of learning something difficult, we might justify our feelings of pain with the fact that we must learn the thing, or that it is required for some reason that we’ve come up with or that we’ve been convinced to think by someone else. I don’t think this is particularly unreasonable, but the most notable aspect of a situation like this is that we can lose track of why we are feeling what we are feeling. We might lose the awareness or knowledge that we are experiencing a negative feeling as a result of something we have or someone else has come up with. It is by this thing, called forgetting, that we can cause ourselves pain and anguish by our own hands, and thus, become confused as a result of our pain.
Most would not be willing to acknowledge that pain is caused by their own hand. It would always be pointed to an external variable, something outside of themselves that is causing them pain. This very well could be true, and it could be something else impacting their internal state. With that one particular thing they can point at, there may be an innumerable number of variables that they are not capable of noticing, and all the variables happening internally they have yet found. The easiest path to feeling a solution or conclusion is by choosing a particular thing that is the cause of something else, but in reality, things are always much more nuanced, so nuanced in fact, that in our attempts to grasp the complexity, we find there is only more to know, and so instead, we feel as if we understand less. Once in a state of understanding that we cannot perfectly hedge a path of our choosing, it might lead us to question if such an action is foolish, and instead of drudging down the path of suffering, we are to opt for one that is natural.
What exactly would define natural? Sure, we might want to say the path with the least resistance, the easiest path to take. However, I would add that this can actually become a little dangerous. Manipulation is rampant in humanity, and unfortunately, many humans want you to believe that their thoughts are truth, despite all thoughts being equal in truth. Reasonably, the most accurate exception to this would be the things that can be replicated, and numerically denoted as the same after many experiments. Generally, most would consider mathematics to be the closest to truth that we have, but that isn’t my focus. No one is forcing you to believe that math is truth, but many want you to believe their God is the true God, and by believing in any other God, you are then a heretic. Many want you to believe that you must consume and buy goods, because it is the right thing to do, and that you need whatever product is being advertised to you. Many want you to believe that you are worthless, and you shouldn’t think for yourself, because you don’t know any better, so you should listen to others. In our terrible world, perhaps choosing the path of least resistance would then lead us into following the path of others, no?
This might be true, but it probably wouldn’t cause us any harm. Even if the path we’re following has values and ideologies from others, it still causes us to be content. It wouldn’t be in our minds that they aren’t our ideas, nor how we think things should be, they merely would be as how things are, thus going with the grain, rather than against it. Maybe it would be okay to think and act like this in the circumstance that you had never been opened up to the idea of thinking for yourself, or acknowledging a world in which differing ideas exist, and it could truly bring you comfort. Instead of thinking about all the variety of ideas that exist, or how your thinking might be harming you, or maybe how you should be thinking fundamentally, you just are, without any further layer of impairment. Many live this way without their own awareness, because how they are, what they are, has been the easiest path to get on, and so they stuck on that, because no one told them that a particular path is better, or that having different values would be more beneficial to them. In fact, even if you were to continually check yourself, from how far back can you notice where your ideas or feelings stem from? Are those who do this questioning, and those who attempt to decide what values or ideas to have, actually being manipulated into a different set of ideas or values? Or are they similarly unaware of their manipulation?
It becomes difficult to perfectly assign a particular line or point in which something transfers from one type of thing to the next. Categorization of specific types of information are done for ease, and in doing so, the line between each particular box seems a lot more significant than it actually is. The lines begin to blur if you look at them for an extended period of time. To be perfectly aware, in any sense, is basically impossible. Even in the awareness that you cannot be fully aware, you cannot conceptualize awareness beyond what is available to you then. From this we can understand we cannot know all the things that influence us, and we would like to know them, but it’s incredibly difficult to even notice a few things. We have a tendency to point a finger at a particular external thing, focus on that, and stop there, rather than pointing at many things, external and internal. To concretely establish where something begins and ends requires the ability to denote something as a beginning or an ending, but in this, we realize that where one thing ends another begins, and that means we can string many of these together, unable to grasp a true ending or a true beginning. Reactions upon reactions with no proper beginning or conclusion. If this is the case, why bother trying to investigate the values we have or the reasons we act in the ways we do? Why not just let things be?
We can have two ideas that fall on two sides of a spectrum, one of allowing things to happen, and the other focused on deciding what things happen. Many times, and especially myself, we like to clearly decide and associate with one particular side, but in recognizing this pattern consistently, the answer we’re actually looking for always falls somewhere in-between these two sides. What this would mean is that sometimes we want to go with the grain, and there are other moments where we want to do things with intent. In this realization, we can recognize that this idea and many other ideas are going to change, so we shouldn’t hold onto them so deeply, but also, we have to ask questions. One of note is, what is going to be the perfect mix between these two?
The individual decides what the perfect mix is for them. It will also come naturally to them what that mix is, they don’t have to force anything, instead, things will naturally balance out. However, I can describe what this balance is for me, why I believe that is, and with such information, it can help you understand how it works for one person, and how dramatic of a change that might be from yourself.
To preface this description of my balance, it should be noted that I am in the transitory state from someone who acts mostly with intent to someone who allows things to naturally happen. In the experience of someone who started on the opposite side of myself, they might have a different way of thinking. And even if generally being in the middle of two opposing sides is ideal, sometimes one side will have more power than the other, or you might be completely partisan, and that’s okay too. Ironically, by being comfortable with wherever you fall, it could be defined as going with the side with the least amount of resistance, thus you are always falling into that particular category. How I attempt to denote what the intent feels like is generally noted as the feeling of chasing after or obtaining something that does not come naturally. The immediate counter-argument to this, is that, if you do it, then it must be the most natural thing, how could it not be?
I slightly disagree, as something like writing has not come naturally in many cases. It took effort and energy, and I had the availability to choose whether or not I would pursue to write something or not. I had to use intent, and a willingness to create something, to write, and if I had not chosen to act in such a way, I would have done something easier or nothing at all. In many cases, I find that there is resistance to finding words, and then choosing the right ones, and then being able to make those flow nicely and work together. I can’t do this all that well, but what to note is the feeling of discomfort and “stretching,” not my inability to do the task well. I made the choice to experience those things, and there are times where it feels good, like the words come easy, and that my writing has improved, but how did I reach any of those points? Well, sometimes it feels random, like I can write because I woke up on the right side of the bed, but alternatively, it is because of the consistent pushing of boundaries that I am able to do better than what was previously the present. This is an idea I’ve explored before, but in this particular context, what is to be noted is the feeling that it takes substantial effort in order to reach a conclusion.
Another example I would give would be something I’ve recently been working on. I’m going through the freeCodeCamp’s online courses to increase my working knowledge of software development and ability to code. Although it starts out with web development, so instead of a programming language, there’s html and CSS. It obviously starts out very basic, and I’m content with this, as I’m slowly remembering past knowledge and acquiring new information. In case you didn’t know, I’m not really interested in coding itself, perhaps I want to learn and understand programming languages and incorporate that to automate a few aspects of my life, but those goals are vague and limited. I may have the goal of web development, if I learn enough, and that’s a real and achievable goal, but the point is, it takes effort and time to reach any of these goals I create. I didn’t naturally start building websites and doing it for fun, instead, I’m doing it with particular goals in mind, and the general urgency to learn as much as I can, and these things that I learn are merely incidental, but it takes effort to grasp them in any greater capacity. I have to try hard, very hard, to remember and execute the knowledge I learn.
Trying hard does not implicitly decide whether or not something is or has been in a state of requiring intent. This is an association I’ve noticed in the beginning stages of learning something new. Although, I have always been using focus and attempting to remember and learn as much as possible within a small timeframe that I can manage. This means I’m capping out my short-term memory’s capacity, or at least it feels that way, and I’m doing all that I can to remember the information in the long-term as well. This functions fine, but the point in which it no longer functioned fine was when I pushed beyond my limits and expected myself to maintain information beyond what I physically capable of, and when that didn’t happen, I was then upset. I thought with control, focus, and intent, I could achieve any goal I would set, but the reality is, there are real limits that cannot be ignored. In the face of this, I had to acknowledge the lack of control that I have over my own abilities. Indeed, I can push myself, but it is through long periods of time, and the more difficult the thing becomes, there is more time required in order to achieve a goal. In admittance to my inability to remember and understand at the rate I was setting for myself; I understood that I didn’t have control over my genetic makeup. I did not choose the mind I have, nor my ability to take in information, and I most definitely cannot change these.
Intent could be classified as a choice that brings a result that does not come easily. It is a means to specify what needs to be done, and to do that, and just that, above other things. It enables us to focus on something and believe it to have a higher importance than other things. I value using intent greatly, as it has enabled me to do things that I otherwise would have never done, although my negligence to myself has enabled me to believe that intent has hurt me. By going too far, or being unreasonable, or unrealistic, I’ve caused self-inflicted harm that could have been otherwise avoided with the conscious awareness that I have limited control. I think all people want control, although it is a gradient to the extent of that control. To not have control feels scary, to be vulnerable is scary, and to not even have control of what goes on inside of your own head is horrifying. You cannot even decide your own abilities, your own strengths, nor your own capabilities. In spite of this, we want to believe this, and we go about believing it in the form of discovery.
By means of discovering the world, we begin to understand more and less about it at the same time. With every increase in knowledge, there grows evermore complexity in what we once understood. What was once simple is now complex, because we have to account for all that we can see now, that we could not see before. Additionally, humans want not only to control themselves, but the world external of themselves. We want to build environments that are suitable to our needs, we want to predict weather to avoid disaster, we want to create systems of filtrating water, and many other things to make our lives easier to handle. Yes, we want to control the environment, and if we cannot do so, we want to control how we react to the environment. This acts similarly, if not exactly, like how we work within our internal worlds.
Just like the external world, we don’t know how we got here, we can make many guesses, suppositions, and have the feeling like we have decided where we are and what we’re doing, but there are so many variables at play we cannot, with certainty, know how we got to the present. Even if we were to write down all the feelings we felt throughout the day, every thought we had, and all feelings that we had ever felt, it still would not be enough. Unfortunately, even if we measured all aspects of our perception, recorded them, and looked back upon them, we still would not know everything that has impacted us. In this awareness, we realize that we are in a state of lacking control. We thought we could decide what we liked, what we wanted, how we wanted to get there, but instead, there were innumerable variables deciding that for us. We didn’t choose where to be born, what parents to have, nor what schools we must go to. Even in a state of rational choice, supposing you want to choose what college you want to go to, you have to decide within factors like your financial ability to go somewhere, and you have to decide if you have the intelligence in order to perform in such an institution. There is a belief that we do have the ability to choose these things, and there is comfort in that, and I don’t think it’s wrong to be comfortable.
The issue arises when we bring ourselves discomfort, because as a result of blinding ourselves to our complete and utter lack of control, we forgot that we are who we are. No matter how many times we might measure ourselves, internally or externally, we cannot find the exact reasons for how those measurements came to be. I might feel like I’m actively making the choice to learn and understand web development, and maybe I do enjoy it. However, if things were different, suppose I had financial security and did not have to consider my career any further, would I still act in this way? Would I continue using my focus, intent, and time in this way? I don’t believe I would, but the question then becomes, what would I spend my time on? The answer I would attempt to claim would be that I would follow the arts, trying to create beauty, in many different forms. If I had the ability to create, I wouldn’t follow these, right? Well, it gets a little iffy, because creation could be indefinite, and I could create for my entire lifetime, and then some, and still never have a form of completion, because that is not achievable, at least not to me. New forms, new ideas, and different ways to understand and create something different that is pleasing to perceive. What cannot be denied is my interest to build something within that description is not of my own creation. I did not choose to be a person who wants to do that, I might think I did, and I might have some influence, but there were and are so many other variables at play that reinforce the idea that I didn’t choose this path myself.
I recognize that it is okay that I didn’t make all the choices to bring myself to the world that is my present. In using intent, one can focus on what is to be done in the present, not on what has been uncontrollable up until this point. This becomes a fascinating thought. If the past has had innumerable variables at play to make me who I am, and I have lacked control over these, what makes the present different? Even if I felt like I had control, like I was maintaining control, and through that, I was able to obtain what I wanted, did I actively have the ability to make that something to occur in the future? I think this where things can become a little gray. We have a limited amount of control, but we haven’t always had that. For myself anyway, it was only up until teenage years that I had slowly gained the ability to decide many more things for myself. Sure, at all younger ages I had some capability in this, but at that particular age range, I also gained a significant increase in my awareness, thus causing me to believe I had an increase in control. This was not the case, I just had become aware to many more things that I realized caused me to feel or think in certain ways, ways of which, I had no control over until then. Even then, the control I had was limited, as we can change the ways we think or feel, but only as a result of being exposed to those other ways, and believing them to be better. What we believe to be better, of course, is also much out of our control.
There is a great emphasis on control for a reason. While we might not actually have any control, believing we do, to an extent, can enable us to step closer to our wants. Does it matter if we decided what we want or not? Not really, because if we want it, and we can obtain it, then it should feel satisfying when we do, or upsetting when we don’t. Once again, does this not mean we are already on the most natural path for ourselves? Perhaps, but also perhaps not. Something that I am aware of is that I have influenced myself in ways that I do not remember, and because my forgetfulness, I have been able to react to a version of myself that functions in a particular way. No, I have not been able to control everything, but I have been able to react to what has already been, and with each subsequent reaction, I can, with all that has influenced me up until each new point of reaction, have some amount of influence on what will come in the future.
This is the primary idea held within the manipulation of the self. This is great if we know what we’re doing, but we don’t know that most of the time. We have some guesses, maybe we’ve learned a thing or two from other people, but for them, it was their guess as well. We’re all doing varying levels of guessing, trial and error, and sometimes we forget that something does work or does not work. For me, a way that this has worked has been a manipulation that has caused me to believe that I should do the things I do. I didn’t naturally believe I should do anything. A way this has not worked has been mental barriers set-up to minimize my ability to feel emotion, which existed to minimize pain, but it minimized all other feelings as well. I had the choice to make these systems. They were built to cause me to feel certain ways, but the more distance between their creation and their execution, the more confusing it can feel if there is no ability to recall how it came to be. Manipulation of yourself can be easily done by the fact that we forget, and because we forget, we don’t realize that we’ve set ourselves up to be our present selves, and with intention, we can continually influence what our future selves are going to feel and how they are going to act. We don’t need to know all the reactions that caused us, we might want to, and it would be great, but what we do need is the awareness that we are the result of reactions, and we can continue the ripple.
This pulls back to having both the ability to act with intention and the ability to go with the grain. By being caught up in trying to control what we focus on and what we believe we must do, we can lose focus on how we made it to that point in the first place. From my perception, no one has had the ability to focus with intent, the same way, their entire lives. Rather, they’ve reached a point in their development where they started believing they could have influence over the reactions that had already been for so long, and maybe this is the case, but maybe not. However, upon feeling they have control over what should happen next, and believing they have their own wants, they want to force those wants into reality with action. Maybe they will use this to obtain money, knowledge, or power, or maybe none of these. It is a matter of their feeling of want.
The next step upon realizing you have the ability to steer the ship in particular directions is to realize the ship was running on automatic before you came along. It was doing just fine too. You didn’t really need to come along and make any changes or have any influence over the direction of the ship, but you can, and that’s okay. Yet, you cannot ignore this fact, the reality that the ship can run on automatic, and you don’t need to decide where it goes. I think it’s okay to want this, and I act like this, but I also realize that sometimes I don’t know better than what the automatic steering wants to do, and I don’t know where it might bring me.
By being stuck in the mindset of someone who wants to clearly decide where they go, without any adaptability for change, their path will be clear, however, boring. They will believe they know where to go, how to get there, and they’ll never stop steering, nor take a moment to look upon the sea. The only reality in their life will be the ability to steer, and if that’s what they want, that’s okay, but what they probably want above all else is the island to which they are heading. Whatever it is they want, whether it be any of the three aforementioned things, or something exceedingly abstract, upon receiving the thing they want, they will let loose of the wheel.
I’ve been caught by this, being totally one-sided, but upon realizing this, I could then loosen my grip on the wheel and allow myself to peer upon the vast waters. I could look for the sparkles in the water, the blueness of the water, the fish, the sharks, the whales, the reflection of both the sun and moon. If I had not stopped for a moment to admire these things that I’ve been sailing past, I would have never been able to appreciate them, because I would have been so totally focused on the task at hand that I wouldn’t have been able to realize all that existed outside of my intentionally-limited perspective. By looking at only the wheel, or only my destination, I would then start to believe that these were the only things that existed, and if that’s all that existed, I would then believe there was nothing else to look upon.
How does one go about finding a balance between these two? We obviously want to have our goals, and we can appreciate the means to achieving those goals, and we can enjoy being determined in our means to reach the finish line. We might want to be able to quantify this balance, but I think it truly comes down to feeling. Feeling is something that’s a little more abstract, something we can’t put numbers on, or at least not yet, and because of this, it can be generally described as something as variable from person to person. What a balance to me could be a balance to you, but it could just as well not be.
Recently, I have experienced a few interactions and moments that reminded me that I can allow things to happen, and I don’t need to exactly hold so strongly onto the wheel. All that matters is that I will have the ability to correct the course, or even, accept that a different course can be taken. Something simple that I did a few weeks ago was being a part of an event with a few VRChat friends, it was for Thanksgiving, and I initially did not want to spend my time that way, but I did anyway. I thought it could be an opportunity for fun, and I should be willing to have moments like those here and there. The event itself was okay, but afterwards, like a party, there were a few stragglers and one started speaking with me, and we started to chat for a while. Before I knew it, I had made a friend, something that seldom occurs, as a result of my own interest to create friendships, or so I would try to make myself believe. We talked on and on, and things were nice. I felt like this person had a mental agility that made for conversation more captivating than usual. Additionally, I did not judge this person, nor did I look for ways to judge this person, which I’d like to believe a sign of my development in that particular regard. If I had judged this person, I would have dismissed them, and we wouldn’t have become friends.
Another relevant example would be YouTube. There is no reason why I should make videos and upload them, yet I do, and I had to start somewhere. At first, I was writing, for the sake of sharing ideas, but it didn’t have to take the form of video content. Although it did, and because of my lack of experience, it started out difficult and confusing, and I had other systems that made me fretful of this means of sharing information. However, I did it anyway, and it seems like I’ve had a positive impact, even if miniscule, on at least a few individuals. I could have stared at the wheel, writing only, moving onto the next idea, and continually shuffling on from one long congruent list of words to the next, however, I took things a little further, and it seems to have been a positive choice. Sure, if I decide to stop working on this type of content, I would have more time for other things, but similarly, I would not have the benefit of working on videos. Not only that, there’s a bigger and more important truth, which is that I wouldn’t have known what was to come until it had, and I had to accept this.
Expectation allows for goals to be set and then a unit of measurement can be used to establish how long it will take to achieve or obtain something. I could easily create an expectation that I will be able to write a program in C if I spent a certain amount of time learning and executing the information I learned. This expectation could have grounds of reasonability, like how long it has taken me to learn programming languages previously, or other similar systems that I’ve had to learn. However, I’ve never learned C before, so to learn something new, even if I had learned similar things before, I could not accurately expect myself to learn by a certain time or by a certain rate. Whatever value I could come up with could not be used with seriousness. I might want to, but I could not. It would take until I actually started learning and using the programming language that I could realize how long it would take.
Other examples in the past that I’ve used work well too, like not knowing what the taste of a food is until actually trying it. We could try to reasonably decide what it will be like using our other senses, but we don’t truly know the flavor until it touches our tongues. What I want to establish is something a layer deeper than this. Instead of investigating the fact we can’t know what we don’t know as a result of our actions and refusal to try what is in front of us, I want to focus on the fact we literally don’t know there could be food to try in the first place, or that C is a programming language that exists.
How and when do you learn that anything exists? It is usually by the fact it is brought to you, it is brought to one or many of your senses, by chance or by the advances of another individual. How would I know how to use words if people around me never used them? If I had never been exposed to words, how would I know what they are? I wouldn’t. Even in exposure, how would I know how to read and write if no one ever taught me? I could attempt to recognize the patterns, but I would have to reasonably find a reason to do this in the first place. As children, many things are brought to our attention without much of our own choice. Whether we want to or not, we’ll follow the orders of those above us, both parental figures and those in institutions, like teachers. In our small perspective of the world, we quickly learn many things and acquire a plethora of experiences. Mind you, a child has no experience of anything, so imagine what a child of six years old feels when they have no prior experience of a hamburger, and then, they have one.
Let’s take this a step further. Let’s say the parents of the child introduce something extreme to the child that they had never experienced before. Instead of any hamburger, we can say McDonald’s, and this will have more of a significant impact than expected in many cases. Assuming the child has had a pretty healthy diet prior, and the foods were lacking in excessive MSG and other additives, then something like a McDonald’s hamburger might bring a massive paradigm shift to the mind of the child. They might cry or be upset when other food is presented, they will reject it, only asking for their MSG and sodium ridden garbage. This will obviously be upsetting to the parents too. What’s important to note is that this same thing happens to those who believe they are using intention to achieve their goals. They lose sight of the fact it was through factors outside of their control that they were allowed to believe they have the ability to steer the ship, and it was through the external world that they learned what to steer to and why.
By being so totally caught up in their own world, they lost sight of the beauty of the sea, just like the child losing interest in other types of food. What the child doesn’t know is that there are other foods out there to try, and just because that one particular food seemed especially delicious, that doesn’t mean the other ones are disdainful. Nor does that child realize it was through others that they were introduced to any kind of food in the first place. This is why there are times we must loosen our grip. If we don’t allow things to come naturally, we won’t learn more than what we already know, we won’t explore what could be explored. If we become beings who believe one particular thing is above all else, then we neglect all that is outside of our tunnel-vision.
I believe it to bring harm, too. We can become confused to why the world had become so dry or sad. This feeling could come as a plethora of reasons, but one could be that we have lost sight of the sea. We stopped looking. Instead, if we had stopped to look upon all the beauty withheld in the ocean, or even merely upon the waters, we could be reminded of all we don’t know. There is so much depth to our world, but if we become caught up in one thing, thinking we have it down, thinking that’s all there is, we will feel awful. It is a delusion to believe we know anything, and it is a delusion to believe there can only be one destination. We can choose an island to steer towards, but we have to look upon the waters while travelling there, because if we don’t, we will become gray and tired.
I established this duality by thinking about myself as the emotional person and the machine. The machine is the one who is learning, understanding, and executing commands. The feeling person is creating, feeling, and becoming a part of things. These two sides work together, and the more I try to isolate them, the more I feel isolated, and the more confused I feel when something isn’t working. Both sides have to work together, I have to emotionally be driven to do things, to understand things, whilst also be willing to put in time and energy to execute the same things over and over again until they stick. However, I also have to be willing to let my emotional side float wherever it wants, because it was only through that action that I could find the things to dig deeper into. If I don’t allow any fluidity in myself, and I become rigid, then I feel rigid, and that feeling is one of confinement and boredom, but it brings certainty.
I was only able to gain interest or a willingness to do any of the things I do through letting them come to me. I didn’t choose anything in specific, I’ve had no choice in anything, but I like to believe I do, because I want to believe I’m in control. To some extent, I’d like to believe I have the willingness to continue doing things, because I have just as equally been in situations where I could choose not to do anything. There has been some confusion between nothing and something within my mind, especially in the context of letting things happen. I used to believe by not being in a state of choosing everything that must be done, and then doing that, instead of other things that would come more naturally, I would be doing nothing. This can be harmful, and it’s something to be wary of, but it’s just as important to be wary of the absence of doing, or the quality of doing that you enact.
We have to loosen the grip on intent, on the wheel of the ship, otherwise we will plant our feet and stick in the same spot, thinking we’re stuck there, without realizing we have the ability to release our grip and move around. We cannot view upon all there is to see if we choose not to, and it might be paradoxical to say that we have the choice to look or not to look, yet to look would be giving into the feeling that we don’t have to look at all. However it might be put, one has to decide where the balance of control and freedom lay. Each individual has to test themselves and find out their comfort levels, what works for them, and then continually be in a state of allowing that to adjust to what the needs are in the moment. There will be times where you want nothing more than to focus on the thing you’re absorbed in, while at others you want to get away from it all. Be willing to accept both of these sides, they exist for a reason, and to ignore one would bring confusion and discontent. Conclusively, the answer of a perfect answer does not exist, however, the closest one could come is through their own willingness to accept what feels right. Use both your heart and mind, and allow your heart and mind to do their own work, and trust them. Treat them well, and they too, will treat you well.